NBC Universal and MTV Networks are using mobile interactivity and advertising provider SinglePoint's SingleBrand Ad Marketplace to monetize their mobile messaging inventory.

Campaigns for NBC Universal's properties include NBC, USA Network, Sci Fi Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, NBC News and NBC Sports, as well as Universal Studios and Universal Studios Theme Parks. MTV Networks' campaigns include CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV Tr3s and VH1.

"We're focused on empowering broadcasters and advertisers with interaction via mobile devices," said Rich Begert, CEO of SinglePoint, Bellevue, WA. "This is the first ad marketplace where advertisers can come to us and say ?I want to do something with messaging, what's the inventory out there and what are the demographics I can target?'

"We needed to provide a platform to do dynamic ad insertion on the fly, but there wasn't anything out there, no technology we could buy or license, so we decided to build our own platform allowing publishers to upload inventory and associated demographics so it could be executed self service from the buy side," he said.

"Both NBC and MTV realize that nobody else has provided anything like this, and if you want to get access to their mobile messaging inventory, you have to come through us."

SinglePoint is making MTV Networks' and NBC Universal mobile messaging inventory available through the recently introduced SingleBrand Ad Marketplace, which the company claims is the first Web-based mobile advertising marketplace for text messaging campaigns.

Advertisers and brands can browse available inventory, buy ads, submit creative and monitor campaign results via the Web.

As part of the deal, SinglePoint will continue to manage and execute multiple participation media campaigns such as mobile voting, sweepstakes, contest, breaking news text alerts and the delivery of personalization content for the various NBC Universal and MTV Networks properties.

SinglePoint works in partnership with entertainment brands, media companies, brand managers, and advertising agencies.

CBS Corp. is another current publisher partner of SinglePoint.

Its mobile ad network partners include MoVoxx, Quattro Wireless, Mojiva, Ringleader Digital, Jumptap and 4Info.

SinglePoint also has connectivity with all the carriers in North America. Verizon Wireless is the only one that allows off-net MMS delivery, while the others allow streaming or WAP-link video.

SinglePoint can serve banners with click-to-call, click-to-WAP and click-to-video functionality. In addition, they can enable pre-roll and post-roll video ads.

Advertisers can target by gender, income, age and ad size, among other demographics.

"Everything's associated with a show, consumes are responding to a call-to-action or seeking information about a specific show, and there are highly targeted demographics associated with each show," Mr. Begert said.

"Publishers are able to upload that demographic information into our marketplace so advertisers can log in there to do discovery -- ?I'm looking for inventory for this period of time and this demographic' and instantaneously we'll show all the inventory we have that matches those criteria," he said.

"We've been surprised at the amount of interest this has been getting, people interested in licensing it and having it on a hosted basis, and we think this is bridging one of those barriers to developing mobile as a good advertising medium."